Upton Sinclair – 1878-1968

Sinclair burst onto the literary scene in 1906 with The Jungle, a novel set in the stockyards of Chicago and exposing, in vividly nauseating detail, the sordid practices of the meat-packing industry, which greedily purveyed tainted meat to the American masses. The novel presented the meatpackers as a melodramatic metaphor for the worst of American big business: a heartless monolith willing to sicken or even kill the public for the sake of profit. The book spurred Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act.